February 28, 2008
To: All UT Faculty and Staff
From: President John Petersen
Dr. Jesse Poore, University of Tennessee, Knoxville professor and director of the Science Alliance will become Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer effective March 1.
Dr. Poore will head reorganization of the university's information technology program. A former information technology leader at Georgia Tech and Florida State University, Dr. Poore will have full authority to lead implementation of a full-scale reorganization of UT information technology programs.
Over the past several months, we have taken an assessment of the university's information technology needs by conducting a comprehensive review that included analyzing our operations, identifying areas for improvement, and implementing changes that focus resources on IT to contribute to the achievement of the university's goals.
We have decided on an organizational structure that best allows us to provide faculty and staff with necessary and improved IT services now and in the future, and Dr. Poore is an excellent choice to help the university achieve that goal.
In addition to his experience managing IT at Georgia Tech and Florida State University, Dr. Poore has served as department head for the UT Knoxville Computer Science Department and director of the Science Alliance, a program that promotes cooperative research between UT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He also is a co-founder of the UT ORNL's Joint Institute for Computational Sciences.
The consultants who helped with our study told us it would take three years to achieve a full modernization in our IT functions. Rather than a Band-Aid approach to solving a complex problem, this is a permanent solution involving proven leadership that will assure optimum effectiveness.
Dr. Poore will determine the structure and process to be followed, but philosophically, it is intended that we will have an approach where the system is responsible for oversight and policy as well as certain system enterprises, while our campuses manage their local operations within the policy framework. It will be up to the leadership to manage that process in a way that works.
We have a lot of excellent people in IT who are doing good work and who have kept our system functioning under difficult circumstances. We are grateful for their efforts and appreciate their hard work. Having strong leadership in place will enable them to be even more effective.
Dr. Poore's appointments as the Ericsson-Harlan D. Mills Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Science Alliance will continue.
— John Petersen
